The Effect Of Active Volcanoes On The Big Island

The islands were formed because there is a hot spot that is located in the Earth's mantle and underneath the southeastern part of Hawaii. Over the last seventy million years, this hot spot only marginally changed its location. The hot spot caused innumerable lava eruptions that built volcanoes under the sea. These volcanoes would ultimately grow upwards until they form islands. However, the volcanoes did not erupt infinitely because the seafloor under it was moving constantly, at a rate of 7 to 9 cm per year, across the hot spot in a northwestward direction. In time, every volcano there would be ripped away from the hot spot and transported northwestward. This is what happened to the active volcanoes on the Big Island, who would be replaced
by new volcanoes like: Lōʻihi (the first one to be born). From Hawaii, the volcanoes’ (that produced the islands) age will increasingly enlarge; to the volcanoes (about 30 million years old) on the northwest end. The chain of volcanoes will bend sharply to the northward to become the Emperor Seamounts, after the chain remains as seamounts for another 3,000 km.